28.3.10

lavish & lumber


I like taking blurry, poor photographs of my works in progress. I like the shrinking of a large canvas into something smaller, so I see how it looks like as a whole, not just as fragments while I paint. It might be the art history studying speaking, but I get this feeling of the sublime whenever I work on something, the same way Barnett Newman wanted his gigantic 18 feet pieces to be viewed from a short distance, so that the spectator is immersed and can never grasp the entire image, so that s/he is only overwhelmed with the colour red. Does that sound a little bullshitty to you?
Today I saw my art professor while I was sitting outside of 401 Richmond, eating a burrito, as he was walking up the steps. It's so strange that I'm always caught "nomming" in an unattractive, quirky manner whenever the men I want to impress pass by. Which dampens my spirit a little, knowing that I do feel the need to impress the opposite sex so often in my life. Though I think it's not just the opposite sex I need to impress, it is everyone. But isn't that the case for a lot of artists? Do they not just want approval as well? Yes, your work is lovely, yes your work is provocative, it works, it is quite successful. Is art worthless until someone harvests the worth from it? I'm coming from the "product" view, but of course, the act of creating harbours enough worth. Worth worth worth worth. Psychoanalyze everything.
What ever, it's 2:30 am. I need to sleep, wake up in 5 hours and work on this painting.




16.3.10

Show? Yeah.

I have a show next week; how do these things happen to me, I don't even go searching for opportunities (which I should be if I want to "succeeeeeed."

That ugly horrible painting I finished last week is going up, and if my prof is nice, maybe I can get that 3X3 Embrangled hair piece up too. Well, the more I look at it, the less I like the door, but that can be fixed up since I no longer have a requirement to use an acrylic transfer.

Stretched a canvas today, I really enjoyed just doing something with precision, despite my usual character. It's nice to sometimes not have to do pictorial problem solving, to just be satisfied with having a taut, straight painting surface with cleanly folded corners.

EDIT: Whoops, the show is going to be at the Gales Gallery in ACW at York. It's really for graduating painting students, but since Yam is course director for the painting division, he gets a say on what gets to go up. I have misgivings with having my canvas up beside other kids who have had three more years of university experience, but I guess I can't live life by not being courageous somehow.

9.3.10

badness

Artistic frustration mixed with missed deadlines mixed with disappointment and smelly jeans.
Taking all I can muster to not throw out the canvas and start over.